The next landmark that caught his eye was a large white steeple. Ellis leaned over the steering wheel slightly, pushing the bill of his hat up to peer out the windshield up at it. The spire stuck out against the dark sky like it was reaching up towards the heavens, and he lifted his foot from the accelerator pedal, letting the SUV coast to a slower speed as they rolled up towards the Baptist church on the side of the road.

"Why are we slowin' down?" Coach inquired.

The southerner pointed.

The large double arched doors had been barricaded shut with several long planks of wood, making entry impossible without a crowbar or possibly a fire axe. Interesting, Ellis thought, that the barrier had been constructed on the outside, rather than inside. It was the same for the stained glass windows on the sides of the church. Out in the lawn were several impromptu crosses, which were stuck into the ground, each near a respective mound. Closer to the church the crosses were made of good wood, and painted white too, the graves neat and square. Further out however, it was clear less time had been spent in burial, as the crosses were unpainted, or simply made of two found tree branches and a nail, and the mounds were sloppy or only half finished. Additionally, they were all packed much closer together, barely any room between the 'plots'.

Rochelle pressed against the window, reading from the sign out front on the lawn. It was missing a few letters that had fallen off, but not so many were gone that the message wasn't legible. "Carriers: go to Shands Med Center, south Saint Clair…"

Ellis sensed it as Nick went rigid in his seat beside him, and his own gut gave a little churn at the word they had last seen emblazoned on the NAS runway. An uncomfortable silence filled the cabin. "So… do we go there…?" he spoke up, hovering his foot over the gas indecisively. The engine idled.

"Well, we haven't gotten any other directions so far…" Rochelle reasoned uneasily.

"Are they directions or instructions?" Nick spoke up, his green eyes dark and wary, staring at the sign. "Sounds like they turned the medical center into a slaughterhouse." Ellis wriggled, watching the wipers go back and forth across the slick windshield in rapid cadence. The thought of rounding up stray infected to send them to a particular area seemed a daunting task, though perhaps before the infection had become an epidemic and had still been more or less a small outbreak, quarantining might have been a viable option. Well, until it came to outright extermination, as the runway had commanded.

"Possibly euthanasia," Rochelle said; her notepad had seemingly materialized in her lap, scribbling something down. She tapped her lower lip with her pen, "If they were being humane."

"What we oughta do is go back to Ten and on to Nawlins," Coach advised sagely, offering the alternative.

"Not yet," Ellis snapped a little more aggressively than he had meant to.

The pitter-pattering on the windshield became audible once again as everyone fell silent. He leveled his vision on the steering wheel, gripping it tight to the point where his knuckles began to turn white; he was well aware that all three sets of eyes were on him. By now it was probably painfully clear to Nick and Rochelle that there was something going on between he and Coach. He took a deep calming breath, returning to the situation before them. He wasn't turning back yet– hell, they'd just gotten here, and he wasn't leaving until he found out why this place had been circled on the map.

A streak of lightning lit up the sky, a loud rumble following shortly after. Ellis frowned, the bolt causing him to look up and notice something he had missed before about the church. Something was spray-painted up beneath the church bell. He squinted his eyes at it– the rain made everything so damn difficult to see. But more lightning arched across the sky and this time he saw it: FREEDOM, with a large arrow pointing down the street the direction they were headed, into town.

That tore it. The deceased men and women of the control tower had been aiming to go here, to go to 'freedom'. Freedom from what, that was a mystery, but perhaps soon enough, they would see.

Wordlessly he started the car forward again, the back wheels giving a little spin on the wet asphalt before they engaged.

"You okay, kid?" Nick asked a few moments later, looking suitably concerned.

Ellis risked a glance in the rear view mirror, at the football player in the back seat. He'd promised the older man he wouldn't tell either Nick or Rochelle of his plans, but it was getting harder and harder not to the longer he kept it bottled up inside. "I'll tell ya later…" he murmured back quietly. If nothing else he could just think up some other reason he seemed so distracted.

Well, assuming Nick didn't see right though that. He made a point to avoid the gambler's eyes.

He took Saint Clair south, just as the sign had said; the severity of the rain almost made him miss the exit and double back. The lower surface road was practically flooded by the constant downpour, a couple inches underwater in a number of places. The deep puddles sent water cascading up from the wheel wells as Ellis drove through it at a decent clip.

There was no apparent life in the town, infected or otherwise, and it was making him anxious. Subconsciously he drove a little faster. He couldn't puzzle it out. Sure, you'd expect folks to be gone, they would have evacuated their homes a long time ago, but no zombies either? That shit just didn't make sense. There had been zombies everywhere else they'd been, Brunswick, Kingsland, Yulee, Jacksonville… Why the heck not here?

A lot of buildings looked to be in severe disrepair from the snatches he caught every time the wipers cleared the windshield. He studied them. Many of the stucco or concrete domiciles were cracked, some had collapsed walls and even roofs, a few looked like they had been the victim of fires… as crazy as that sounded for all the water around them, burnt blackened tips and edges of former structures sticking up from the ground. The severity became more and more pronounced as they progressed. Over and over he asked himself... what had happened to this place…?

The car gave a bump, the shock absorbers taking the majority of whatever uneven surface they had just driven over. Ellis grunted, unable to identify where in the road the potholes were since muddy water obscured it, and the car jostled a second and third time as he hit a couple more.

An overhead stoplight was bowed at a forty-five degree angle ahead of them. Ellis frowned at it, squinting to discern why. The metal wasn't bent, the concrete underneath it was half unearthed, as if the ground had sunk beneath it and it stayed on the precipice.

Which was when he realized the intersection he was speeding right towards was the edge of one of Rochelle's 'sinkholes'.

He slammed on the binders with his boot, the SUV screeching to a halt, throwing all the survivors forward. The seatbelt around his torso locked up, forcibly knocking the wind out of him as he was kept from being thrown forward. His back slammed against the seat when the car abruptly stopped moving. "Holy shit, you guys…" he gasped, trying to catch his breath, pulling his hands rapidly away from the steering wheel, as if he had been bitten by it, "M'sorry."

The other three seemed to be in a similar state, thanks to the seatbelts constricting their chests. Rochelle coughed. "Why d-did you…?" she started.

The car gave a lurch.

The right front tire was sinking, the weight of the vehicle causing the ground beneath it to crumple. Ellis' eyes widened in alarm and he threw it into reverse as fast as he could, pressing his foot down on the gas pedal and hoping to hell the SUV was the four-wheel drive model.

The tires slipped a little, the car pivoting around on the now stuck wheel. He grit his teeth and eased up on the gas a little. There was another lurch and they descended deeper, the earth giving out around them, pavement cracking, tipping the front end of the car downward. Nick and Rochelle both pressed against the glass to watch with wide-eyed concern, looking ready to bail out the doors if need be.

"Ellis, boy, get us outta here!" Coach barked at him, his gloved hand digging into the shoulder of his seat.

"I am!" he snapped back. "If I gun her, we're only gonna get stuck deeper!" he shouted in explanation– he'd run an autoshop and towing company for shit's sake. It was the same exact principle as quicksand, the harder you struggled the quicker you sank; the faster he spun the wheels without traction, the deeper and more inescapable the rut would become. Goddamn he did not deserve this kind of attitude and disrespect from the elder man. He knew what he was doing. It was bullshit!

He tried again, pulsing the accelerator pedal gingerly. The SUV gave a bump as something finally caught and it lifted out from the submerging asphalt. He straightened out the wheel and hurriedly drove them a good thirty or forty feet back, far enough away to be sure the sinkhole wouldn't expand out to them and try to take them into its maw once more.

There was a communal sigh of relief about the cabin.

Ellis lifted his blue eyes. He stared out the windshield with disbelief as the enormity of what lie before them hit him. The land had been swallowed up, east to west, nothing remaining of the town known as Starke besides the few residences on the outskirts they had been barreling past. All of it had literally been sunk into the earth, leaving nothing but a soupy mess covered by the rain of the storm. He wasn't naive enough, however, to think all this was the result of natural disaster.

"Looks like green circles mean 'drop bombs here'," Nick said scathingly. He hooked his thumb.

Ellis' eyes followed the gambler's indication. Beside them on the side of the road stood a population sign, proudly declaring the town's former inhabitance. And tacked beside it was another word that was numbingly familiar, from the radio conversation they had overheard in Jacksonville:

Cleansed.

He felt his forehead touch the top of the steering wheel, eyes shutting sorrowfully. He had insisted they come out here for nothing. Absolutely nothing. The military had already been here, destroyed everything, no doubt because the medical center had become irreparably overrun. The bombs had certainly fixed that– there wasn't a zombie in goddamn sight.

And here he had been hoping for something stupid like an internment.

Christ, he was an idiot.

He sighed and frowned out at the expanse of water. But what about those people who had been searching for 'freedom'… had they been sunk along with the zombies and the town? Had some of them escaped? Or had they never existed at all? Nothing made sense. Nothing made any goddamn sense. He sent his fists down on the steering wheel suddenly; the car issuing a loud honk amid the still pouring rain. He gave it three more good pummels before folding his arms with irritation.

Only one thing was clear. They had to turn back now, go back to the original plan. And it ate him up inside knowing it would only get them that much closer to losing their compatriot.